Greenville News editorial: City on right path to phone ban

The city of Greenville is taking the right approach as it investigates a proposed ordinance that would ban the use of handheld communications devices by drivers within the city limits. The idea began as a plan to ban texting within the city, but quickly became a broader approach to combat all forms of distracted driving involving mobile telephones.

This is not a knee-jerk reaction. City Council and other city officials including the chief of police and the city attorney's office deserve credit for moving deliberately on this issue. Banning the use of handheld devices would be a dramatic change and should only be done if it has broad support in the community.

The city's hands were forced on this issue. The state Legislature for several years running has considered legislation that would ban texting and driving across the state. Each time lawmakers failed to approve a law, ignoring the dangers of this activity. There now are at least 13 local bans on texting while driving in the state. Nationwide, South Carolina is just one of two states in the country without some form of ban on texting and driving, according to a recent report in The News.

Given those realities, it is understandable that cities such as Greenville are taking matters into their own hands. In an increasingly urban area that is the cosmopolitan center of the Upstate, if not the state, public safety is increasingly an issue. Whatever steps the city can make to ensure that drivers and pedestrians are safe within the city limits are worth exploring.

Distracted driving is dangerous, and most drivers have a story of another driver who encroached on their lane or worse while that driver was playing with a mobile phone rather than keeping his eyes on the road.

Mayor Knox White expressed some valid concerns at a recent City Council work session where the proposal was discussed. Chief among them was whether a total ban on handheld devices was going too far, according to the newspaper's report.

That concern needs to be explored, and the city is taking prudent steps to ensure it is not going too far. City leaders will seek input on the idea from neighborhood presidents in January, and then will take the proposed ordinance to a public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem David Sudduth said in an interview that the council will listen very carefully to citizen input on this idea.

That is important. This would be a radical change for Greenville drivers, and because such an ordinance will by its nature be largely self enforced, it makes sense that the change has broad support.

The city can and should make the very clear case that a total ban on handheld devices makes the most logical sense from both a safety and enforcement standpoint.

First, total bans take away every distraction that can be caused by a communication device. Studies have shown that people just talking on the phone while driving are as impaired as a drunk driver.

Just as importantly, total bans are the easiest for police to enforce. There is no gray area of whether or not the individual was sending or reading a text. As Police Chief Terri Wilfong very clearly put it in the recent news report, "If it's in their hand and we can see them doing something, it's easy for us to enforce."

The proposal City Council is considering would allow drivers to use hands-free devices that are readily available for most phones and even are becoming more common as standard features in new cars.

The city also is taking the right approach regarding fines. Any penalty for violating such an ordinance should be steep and act as a deterrent. The city is considering fines that would increase with each offense and be steep enough to discourage drivers from violating the law.

Handheld device bans are increasingly common from cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., to entire states such as Washington and California. The nearest state to South Carolina with a handheld device ban is West Virginia.

Texting and driving is exceedingly dangerous; so is using a phone while behind the wheel. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that drivers talking on a phone are 30 percent more likely to crash, and the University of Utah found in a study that drivers using phones are equally as impaired as drivers who are legally intoxicated.

The risks increase when texting or reading emails, which consume even more of a driver's attention. Sending a text message causes a driver to take his eyes and hands off the task of driving long enough to move the length of a football field; that is a potentially deadly period of distraction not just for the driver, but for everyone around him or her - passengers, other drivers and pedestrians.

In 2011, according to NHTSA statistics, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers, and an estimated 387,000 were injured.

For those who would oppose the ordinance because they do not think it would change driver behavior, a look at the state's mandatory seat belt law dispels those doubts. The year that law was passed, 69.7 percent of state residents used their seat belts, one of the worst rates in the nation. Last year, 90.5 percent of South Carolinians buckled up, well above the national average of 86 percent. The law changed behaviors. Texting laws can do the same.

This seems like a drastic step for the city to take. However, the rationale for such bans is clear and they are becoming more common around the country. The state Legislature continually refuses to get tough on texting and driving. Although it is increasingly frustrating that cities need to take the lead in this area, it is encouraging to see Greenville doing so and in a very prudent way.

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Greenville News editorial: City on right path to phone ban

The city of Greenville is taking the right approach as it investigates a proposed ordinance that would ban the use of handheld communications devices by drivers within the city limits.